Hotels

"Hotels"

Then there was the visit I paid to my old friends in town from for a professional conference, Deborah and Frank, whom I inconvenienced by showing up late. I'd wandered, actually come too early and taken a walk near their hotel, then miscalculated the time and distance.

The area was one I didn't go to often, the far West Village meatpacking district, which was maze-like, a lot of the streets named not numbered. I got a little lost on the way back, wasn't sure if the hotel was on tenth or ninth street, guessed and was right but too late.

My old girlfriend Deborah and her husband Frank, who was annoyed, Deborah more understanding, softer. Anyway there was nothing I could do about the damage I'd caused to their plans.  They always came on a tight itinerary, packing as much as possible into a few days. Even a slight delay threw things off. The annoyance on Frank's face, almost a scowl, made clear that my twenty-five minute disappearing act mattered, possibly more than the meeting itself, to him anyway. It was Deborah I'd come to see. She and I went back.

Incidentally, I was friends with them both. No, I'm not sure, don't think I could make such an accommodation with Akemi and a new guy following in my footsteps, so to speak. My feelings for her were too strong. Mind you, it had taken a while for me to adjust to the change in Deborah and my relations. I'd been in love with her in college and then one day she announced she wanted to end things, reclaim her freedom.

Did Akemi ever feel like a captive with me, trapped by my possessiveness, jealousy? I tried my best to respect her independence, space, privacy. There's a limit to how much I can blame myself.

Hotels, needless to say, remind me of Akemi's visit to my friend Nelson in his hotel, during his visit here, also professional, for his film showing. Hours they were together I can't account for.

I'm saying that just to get it out there. Now let's move on.

Of course I could understand if she felt my focus was too strong. It always came back to her. You can see that even in this writing.  

Ironic, I guess, I used the word "captive" because that's what she now was. Not that it was in any way my fault much less hers.  

Move on. Or backward? Sorry if this gets confusing as fuck. Reflects my state of mind, is all I can say. Haven't been sleeping well. Have you ever reached the point of not being able to tell whether it's day or night? Worse even than after a long-haul flight to Japan.

Probably like that in the immigration detention center where they've got Akemi. Converted floor of an office building!

No, I shouldn't be complaining. She's got it much worse. I can't imagine the conditions any more than what happened between her and Nelson.

--

Cut: Akemi reading aloud to me to practice her English. My job was to correct her pronunciation.  

"Dragon headed up the stairs. I saw the muscles of his back ripple under his wet teeshirt."

-from "Grotesque" by Natsuo Kirino, translated by Rebecca Copeland

Friends visited. The morning they were to leave, one got upset she couldn't find the head she'd used with our water floss. Looking for it was delaying her and her friend's departure to the airport. They had a flight to catch.  

"That's okay," I said. "It'll turn up- and fine even if it doesn't. The thing came with something like five heads. We don't use them all." There were only two of us, of course, Akemi and me. We seldom had as many as three visitors.  

Even the word "head" made me worry about losing Akemi to another guy- who had one she might find fascinating.  

I think you know I don't mean the kind used for thinking.

Really stupid, I'll be the first to concede. But she was a woman guys wanted.   To have her lavish attention on your head was something to die for, as the saying goes.

"Men get crazy around me," she had laughed once. And it was true.

Presumably my head was enough for her.  

Now she was gone, but only temporarily, I kept telling myself.

This was before the call finally came from the detention center where ICE had taken her. False arrest. You couldn't even raise that challenge in this time of "America First" authoritarianism.  

I was selfish. I felt for Akemi's predicament but even then wanted to show myself to her in a wet t-shirt, muscles rippling. I know, Ridiculous. But I went to the gym to stay in shape for her.  

There might be guys at the detention center with physiques that impressed her, cops or whatever.  Uniforms did (influence of her culture, I believe). The thing is,: all that was beyond my reach. Can you call me a control freak where Akemi was concerned? Put yourself in my shoes. Come to think of it, that seems a point of all this writing, for you to feel as I did, of course without actually fucking her, to feel the wet of her pussy drawing on your cock, yeah all the way to the head.

Hell.  

How to help her, help myself?

Your reading actually does, if you can believe it. Even if you pan my prose as amateurish. Of course it is! Think I give a fuck? On the other hand, if you feel pleasure, it enhances mine. Weird, huh? But think how you'd feel if you were with a woman like Akemi and she were suddenly gone, the feelings you'd had with her still resonating, crazily.

Thinking of her breasts, silvery surfaces, I know I've talked about that a lot lately- it's on my mind- so smooth, silvery- what was the other word I used?- lustrous. True.

But I also think of her thighs wrapped around me, silvery in their own right, my hands grasping her flesh, as gently as possible. She's light, remarkable in that way and a lot of others.

How she kisses, I kiss her ear and she kisses mine back, poking her tongue in.

Is that all in the past? Am I breaching her privacy with those details?

The indigo top she wears to bed, with the nubby knit texture that reminds you of a quilt in a New England Airbnb, somewhere up where Deborah and Frank live. You want to get that surface in your mouth and pull to free her breasts.

Light, smooth, silken against the nubbly cotton, Nubbly or nubby I don't know the right word. Probably both wrong.

And it doesn't matter. What is is. Was? Goddamn it!

I'm shaking that indigo top (pajamas like in the detention center- which, yeah, has been set up on the floor of an office building downtown, immigration processing center!).

Ripping playfully away like a dog with a bone, playing but deadly serious, to get my tongue at her breast's sliding surfaces, getting my slobber on her skin, her clothing. My words doing much the same.

Breaching her privacy? By what? Giving too much away? But she's not here! Breaching her privacy? How I wish I could!

Have to connect, any way possible. At least until I can find a lawyer or someone to pull beautiful Akemi, my beautiful blameless wife, out of the nightmare she's fallen into, we both have.

I actually try to pick up stories from my experience I think you'll enjoy- it's all flashing before my eyes now, in this silence like an echo chamber. Keep from being driven stark raving mad- for instance by images of Akemi in the skirt she had on then.

Resonant, vivid, that orange-red, crepe-paper-like? Is she still wearing it? Do they do laundry in that place? And in the meantime what do the people use for clothing (I won't call them "inmates")? Prison uniforms? Freaking pajamas?

If you were here, I'd be asking you, "Come on, work with me!"

Trying to summon a person by reconstructing the things they wore? When what you want is your hand at her bush, fingers clawing inside, "squirming" a stupid word, but that's what it is, both my fingers and her, as she moves with you, cries out, wet!

Work with me at least until I can get a lawyer on the phone, which you can't in the middle of the night!